Fishermen are constantly looking for new ways to optimize the art of catching fish. One method of enticing fish to strike is called jigging. Jigging is the movement of a fishing rod in such a manner as to cause the lure or bait attached at the end of the line to move in such a way as to attract fish and cause them to strike. Dock, ice, boat and bank fisherman often use more than one fishing rod and reel. Since the fisherman can only jig with one or at most, two rods at a time, being able to jig additional rods automatically offers a great advantage. A number of attempts have been made to create an automatic jigging device, but they have all suffered from one deficiency or another.
For instance, many of the previous devices require large batteries such as a car battery or they don't alert a user that a fish is on the line and the motor of the device burns out.
Also, these prior art automatic jiggers are not typically adapted to jig the rod in a specific rhythm that is most likely to land the particular type of fish a fisherman is seeking. Specifically, prior art jigging machines tend to move a fishing rod in repeating up and down motions having substantially similar amplitudes at a constant cadence. For instance, a prior art device may move the rod up and down over a set distance over a constantly repeating interval of time. In cam-based jiggers, the cam typically will have a single lobe or a plurality of substantially similar lobes distributed over the circumference of the cam. The frequency can often be changed by varying the speed of an associated motor but the amplitude of the movement cannot be varied.
Other types of automatic jiggers move the fishing line seemingly randomly. These automatic jiggers do not tend to use a cam based system. Some employ vibration, although with vibratory jiggers, the frequency and amplitude of the vibration tend to be fairly uniform for a given vibratory motor setting. At least one device relies upon wind (U.S. Pat. No. 6,817,136) to effect jigging movement. The jigging motion imparted by this device is completely at the whim of the ever-changing wind, giving a user little or no control over the nature of the jigging as might be desirable depending on the environmental conditions and type of fish being sought.
While the action of prior art jigging devices certainly attracts some fish, the majority of fish are unaffected by the predictable and monotonous rising and lowering of a lure, or bait. Further, the random motion jiggers do not permit a fisherman, any control over the jigging motion and depending on the fish being sought and the environmental conditions might even act to repel a fish rather than attract it towards the lure.
Another disadvantage of typical prior art jigging devices is that they do not permit or facilitate a user to adjust the jigging pattern other than perhaps by varying the speed of a motor to change frequency.
Further, prior art automatic jigging devices typically utilize rod holders that either lack the ability to lock or securely hold a fishing rod in place, such as illustrated in published U.S. Patent Application 2007/0011937, or the rod holders utilize lock rings that typically cannot be quickly operated to remove the rod as is necessary to set a hook when a fish bites.
Most prior art fishing rod holders, whether designed for use with an automatic jigger or fabricated for more traditional usage, are composed of a tubular piece of plastic or metal that the butt of the rod can be placed in. The rod holder is in a fixed or on an articulating base that supports the holder. In some instances, the rod holder also includes a system for locking the rod and reel in place to keep large fish from pulling the rod and reel out of the holder, and possibly into the water. Prior art locking systems are generally a second ring of plastic or metal that slides in a track and rotates around the shaft of the rod holder. A section of the ring is open and thus when the ring is rotated around the ring of the holder to an solid area of the ring, the rod and reel are now under the ring and locked in place. The rod can be removed from the holder by rotating the ring to the open position on the shaft over the rod. Often however, anglers have to rotate the ring to the open position and pull the rod out of the rod holder when a fish bites to attempt to “set the hook”. In many instances, the fish has spit out the hook and has fled the area by the time the angler has released the rod from the holder. This can be especially problematic for anglers who are overly excited, have cold hands, have arthritis or are handicapped. Rotating a ring to unlock the rod may in many instances just take too much time. Paul Johnson author of the famous book: The Scientific Angler, estimates that, “most fishers loose 19 out of 20 fish that they have bites from”. Many of these missed bites can be attributed to cumbersome locking mechanisms on contemporary prior art rod holders.